Tilt
by Eponymous Rose
Summary: In the wake of the final fight for Chorus, there's blood in the water, and you'd better believe the sharks are circling. Carolina has a pleasant conversation with the Fed loyalist who's just captured her.


Carolina tips her head against the tree behind her, takes a deep breath of the chilly air. "The leaves are falling," she says.

The kid guarding her shifts nervously; she can hear his feet sliding around in his too-big boots. In the two hours they've been stuck here together, he hasn't so much as taken off his helmet, despite the sweat she can see trickling down from where the malfunctioning seals have left an opening at the back of his neck. At her voice, he turns and brings his rifle to bear, and she blinks back lazily despite his appalling trigger discipline. He hasn't worked out yet that the safety's still on. "Shut up, terrorist scum," he says. His voice only shakes a little. "That supposed to be a threat?"

Holding out her hands palm-up, Carolina says, "I'm just making an observation. Don't read too much into it." When the kid doesn't lower the rifle, she adds, "Hey, I'm out of armor and unarmed. Your guys captured me fair and square, in overwhelming numbers while I was asleep. Real intimidating."

"You're making fun of me." But the kid relaxes his grip on his weapon, slings it over his shoulder with a motion that's clearly meant to evoke casual competence but, well, at this point he should be really glad he's got the safety on. "Who are you, anyway?"

"No one important," Carolina says. A leaf lands on her shoulder and, in a slow, careful, not-at-all-something-to-shoot-at gesture, she brushes it off.

"But important enough for a prisoner exchange," the kid says. "We're gonna get back the people you wrongfully imprisoned at the end of the war."

"That's right. The ones who tried to assassinate the general." She digs one hand into the dirt, picks up a twig and twirls it between her fingers. "You guys going to hold up your end of the bargain once Kimball's people show?"

"Of course," the kid says, affronted. "We stay true to our principles."

Carolina wants to ask who exactly 'we' is, but she's pretty sure she already knows, and she's not sure she can remain entertainingly calm and detached in the face of yet another group of violent conspiracy theorists spouting the oh-so-popular theory that Kimball killed Doyle as part of a hostile takeover of the military might of Chorus. Instead, she crosses her legs, rests her elbow on her knee and her chin on her fist, and smiles. "Principles," she says. "The ones that lead to, say, kidnapping tired old war vets out of bed."

The kid drops his rifle back into his hands and points it in her general direction. "If that's what it takes. Stop talking." A moment later, somewhat inconsistently, he says, "You're not from Chorus, are you? You're one of the others who came."

"Came to help," Carolina says. "Did help, actually, in a pretty big way. You're welcome."

The kid reaches out and, slowly, releases the safety catch on his rifle. Carolina freezes. "I looked up to General Doyle," he says.

Carolina's attention is pretty focused on the muzzle of the rifle in her face, which is the only explanation for why she blurts, unthinking, "Dear god, why."

The kid exhales in a short, sharp breath. "Because he wasn't a conventional leader. Because he was scared but stepped up anyway. And your... your cruel and cowardly friend _killed him_."

Well, so much for avoiding that conversation. "Vanessa Kimball," she says, "mourned the loss of Donald Doyle more than almost anyone I met. Do you have any idea what his sacrifice meant?" Slowly, carefully, she uncrosses her legs and pulls her knees up to her chest. "If you cared, you'd respect what he did and why. And you're here because you don't even believe it happened."

The kid cocks his rifle, sights down it with an easy expertise that sends a chill down her spine. "Right," he says. "You never lost someone important when you weren't there to see it? Times like that, you gotta take a lot on faith. You gotta believe what they did was worthwhile, toe the party line, digest the official story. But doesn't it _eat_ at you, Agent Carolina? Not knowing for sure?"

"You know who I am," Carolina says, slowly and carefully. She pushes herself back against the tree, looking for leverage. "You're not actually a part of this group, are you?"

"Kinda gave the game away there, didn't I? You're a very important person," the kid says. "And you have no idea what you've stumbled into. These assholes don't know who they've got. They honestly think you're just some low-level military advisor to the tyrant." He crouches down to her eye level, rifle still trained on her. "Did you ever consider, Agent Carolina, how an entire army could continue to run smoothly with Donald Doyle at the helm? There are things that happen behind the scenes, in the shadows, in the dark. Deals are struck, alliances forged and broken, about which our fearless and clueless leaders remain wilfully ignorant."

"Oh," Carolina says, mildly."So the Feds had a black-ops program of some sort that's gone vigilante? Those are always effective and never fail miserably at every one of their stated objectives. Especially when they employ jingoistic twenty-somethings who think they just stumbled onto the set of their very own spy movie. Trust me, that's just... just _such_ a winning formula."

"The Federal Army of Chorus needed leadership from the sidelines. Locus helped train us."

"Well great, _Locus_ helped train you." Carolina shifts her weight, trying to make it subtle. "I suppose that means your top-secret organization has some embarrassingly earnest codename?"

"Right now," the kid says, leaning forward to press the muzzle of his rifle against her shoulder, "we're gonna be known as the organization that botched a prisoner exchange. See, we didn't know we had a former Freelancer in our hands. We left an impressionable kid in charge of guarding her, and he was so broken with grief over the loss of his idol that he couldn't resist the cold-blooded murder of one of the people he saw as responsible. Mistakes happen."

Carolina smiles. "Great. That's all I needed to know."

The kid says nothing, but the set of his shoulders shifts. Nervous, she thinks.

"You bad guys really love hearing yourselves talk. We've been looking for opportunities to grab intel on you for _months_. I knew at least one of you spy-games jerks would be involved, and let me just say, it's so much more convenient that it's you."

The kid shakes his head and jams the rifle harder into her shoulder. "You're fast, Agent Carolina, but you're not that fast. Not without your armor. Not without your A.I. I don't think this is gonna go the way you've planned."

"Sure," Carolina says. "I'm not fast enough anymore, but you know what you're forgetting?"

The kid's finger twitches on the trigger.

"I'm not fast enough, but I am _good_ enough."

Her back braced against the tree, her feet planted firmly on the ground, she shoves herself to her feet at the same moment as he fires.

Kimball reaches her position five minutes later, stands with her arms crossed in the center of the clearing with the sun shining down through the orange-gold leaves onto her armor, and nudges the kid's body with her foot. Her bodyguards are sweeping the perimeter, Carolina thinks, good enough to make their presence known without having to be seen. "Is he dead?"

Carolina, sitting again with her back to the tree, shakes her head. "Think he just passed out. He'll probably need medical attention for that broken wrist."

"All right," Kimball says. She visibly makes herself wait a few seconds before saying, "You're hurt too, Carolina."

Carolina coughs a laugh. Her left arm is hanging limp at her side; she can feel the sticky warmth of the blood running down to pool under her hand. "Could've dodged the first bullet, before. Knew I couldn't dodge it this time, but I figured I could still fight. It just, it—" She inhales sharply. "—hurt a little more than I expected."

Kimball crouches in front of her, and Carolina watches her expressionless visor as Kimball pulls the collar of her shirt back enough to reveal the wound, already packed with biofoam. "No exit," she says. "Lodged in the bone, I think."

"Yep," Carolina says, tipping her head back against the tree with an audible _thunk_.

Kimball puts a hand on her uninjured shoulder and squeezes—a bit too hard, since she's in armor and Carolina isn't, but Carolina isn't about to complain. "That was reckless. How about we let me be captured by the shady Fed organization next time?"

"Had to sell it," Carolina says. "Best intel we've gotten in weeks. But that kid's just the tip of the iceberg. There's more of them out there. I can follow up by—"

"Not this time," Kimball says, firmly. "You're gonna go see a doctor, and then I'm benching you until you're completely recovered."

Carolina stiffens, jerks away from Kimball's touch. "I still fought," she says. "I kept fighting. I can keep fighting."

Kimball glances over her shoulder for her bodyguards and, apparently satisfied with their distance, pulls off her helmet. She's got her not-amused face on. "This isn't a punishment, Carolina. You were amazing. But... you know, you told me, after Doyle, that I'm not any good to anyone dead. Neither are you. Rest. These guys will keep. I have counterintelligence working on feeding them false info."

"Counterintelligence," Carolina says. Her initial surge of adrenaline is rapidly giving way to exhaustion. "Hah. They're all nineteen years old."

Huffing a laugh, Kimball pushes a hand back into Carolina's hair and presses a kiss to her forehead. "Yeah," she says. "You're so old and world-weary, Carolina. Persnickety. Positively ancient. Get some rest for those old bones, and we'll keep the kids off your lawn for a bit."

"You're pushing your luck," Carolina mumbles, but reaches out to keep Kimball in place a moment longer, to kiss the corner of her mouth, to nuzzle into the crook of her neck.

Kimball pulls back after a moment, her smile tired and, Carolina thinks, a little sad. "Thank you," she says, at the same time as Carolina says, "I'm sorry," but they've had this conversation enough times by now that neither of them has to protest the other's words.

"C'mon," Kimball says. "Let's get you and the Locus fanboy back to camp." She half-turns, pulling on her helmet and muttering orders into her radio.

"Leaves're falling," Carolina says. "I didn't notice until now."

Kimball pauses, two fingers still pressed to the side of her helmet. "What's that?"

"The leaves," Carolina says. "They're falling."

"Well, yeah. That happens. We'll probably have our first snow fairly soon."

"Snow," says Carolina, thoughtfully.

Kimball pauses, then turns back to her. "Carolina, how... how long has it been since you stayed in one place long enough to see the seasons change?"

"It's been a long, long time," Carolina says. She doesn't think about hot summers and bubbling thunderstorms, about the rare days of frost and the fog of her breath in the air. She doesn't think about these things because she doesn't think about who stood with her on the front porch, watching as the first rare snowflakes fell. "But I could get used to it."

Kimball pushes to her feet, and Carolina's breath catches for a moment when she stands outlined in gold by the sun-dappled trees behind her. At this point, she's gotta be doing it on purpose. "Me too," Kimball says. "Ready to go home?"

Carolina smiles, sleepily, thinks a few days of rest might not be such a bad idea. "Yeah," she says. "Let's go home."


End file.
